My first freelance article (Amy)

Happy Autumn and Halloween!

First of all, I have to vent a little. I got accepted to write informational articles for a freelance writing site. Tom's been doing this for awhile, but it's all new to me. I just finished my first article yesterday. It was pretty stressful, but also exciting to be writing for pay :D. I was waiting today to see if the article got accepted, and just got a reply that they wanted revisions. Now that's nothing unusual in this business (I've learned from seeing Tom go through the learning curve), but the thing this client wanted from me was MORE KEYWORDS throughout the article. I took the time to write the article carefully so it would be informative and make the reader want to read it. It was much better than anything written on the rest of this client's website, and yet they didn't care because it didn't have a high enough percentage of the total article in keywords. Why do people like this bother to pay someone to write their articles, when they could just as well use the 550 keywords they sent me in a list to use for a 850 word article and get the same effect? I'm not exaggerating. The list of words they sent was 64% as long as the total article they wanted. If I had used all of the keywords they wanted--many of which are spelled incorrectly on purpose--I wouldn't have been able to use complete sentences.

Today's lesson, for all of you future entrepreneurs out there, is that if you inundate your web copy with keywords just to get people to find you in a google search and click on the ads on your web page, you will get the opposite effect. Google will not bring up your article in their search field if it is made up completely of keywords. It will red flag their system as a spam site and will not be recommended to people. If your overpaid publicist is telling you that this is the way to get people to your site, you should fire them and find someone else who actually knows what they are talking about!

Okay, I think I've finished my vent. I added an additional bunch of keywords to that article--another 10% of the total. I'm still not sure it's going to be enough for my client. My article is now less informative and more clumsy, but there you have it.

On a lighter note, we're looking forward to going to a party tomorrow night at Jenny and Jonny's house down in Spanish Fork. Tom and I both have Star Wars themed costumes. I'll try to get some pictures of the party up in the next couple of days.


In other news, Tom starts his NaNoWriMo tomorrow (or really he started it about 45 minutes ago, since we're sitting a bit after midnight now). If you don't know what this is, here's the site. http://www.nanowrimo.org/ We're all cheering him on--GO TOM!!

PRESENTS!!

Did I mention I'm looking forward to Christmas vacation? I seem to mention it every five minutes these days. I think I'm making Amy crazy with it.

Amy and I just solidified our plans with my brother John. We're carpooling up to Seattle for the week of Christmas.

This should be a great Christmas. It's been five years since I really spent the holidays with my immediate family. I'm sick of white Christmas. I want wet Christmas. We don't sing "Walkin in a winter wonderland" up there. We sing "Walkin in the rain and the fog." Sounds good.

I won't be ringing the bell for Salvation Army this year. They won't take me since I won't be available for the days leading right up to Christmas, and we'll be living far from any kettle location anyway. I thought about doing it on a volunteer basis this year for a day or something. I really rather enjoyed it, but out move down to Spaulding Manor sort of precludes that.

So in spite of Thanksgiving being the holiday I usually look forward to the most, this year I'm really excited to get out of town for Christmas.

Acobox - Mixed Results from Image Provider

Blogging is a jungle. In this weird competitive niche of writing, attention is like gold. And nothing grabs and holds reader attention than the right pictures. Finding images for blogs can be a tedious and fruitless process. I’ve often found that my own photos are more than adequate for garnishing my ramblings. Sometimes though, it’s clear that my own photos often won’t do the job of holding the reader’s attention.

The search begins. I do the standard image searches and scroll through picture after picture. It’s a struggle to find anything even remotely relevant, let alone images that look good.

Acobox provides a modest array of sharp, clear images for use on blogs. Their home page is stark, but inviting. The designers seem content to let the images do the talking: they’re slick, professional, and full of eye-popping color. Selection is somewhat limited. There are fourteen categories of photos, and some of those only have between five and seven images in each.

The images are easy to transfer. You just select the size you want, and copy and paste the URL. The buttons in the image tool are only compatible with Internet Explorer. As a Firefox user, I found this annoying.

While the images are of the highest quality and flexibility in terms of sizing, I find the relevance of the images to be tenuous. I can’t begrudge Acobox this weakness. Blogging covers such an array of subjects that finding the most relevant images for all blog users is impossible.

In spite of the weaknesses of Acobox, I’m willing to keep my eye on them. The images are so well done that they almost have an “ooh, pretty” hypnotic effect. Find an excuse to use them in your blog and you’ll get replies from people asking where you got them.